Inspiration's Eternal Strength

Not a single one of us, I believe, can honestly say that we haven't borrowed our sense of inner strength from someone who has touched us in some way. Those sets of individuals we just happen to cross paths with in life end up unknowingly passing a bit of their inner light to us. To be honest, they do more than just "pass it," per se. They're the ones who somehow light the match within our spirit. They unwittingly come around when we need them the most, but even if they leave, the flames of that light keep burning. It becomes a sense of willpower that we can draw on whenever life presents us with another mountain that we're not sure we can climb.

When we're lost, feel defeated, and can no longer see a horizon, we seek out that inspiration in order to stop the embers from cooling completely into a ring of forgotten smoke. What we don't always realize is that we're actually the ones who end up saving our own selves, but sometimes our inner warrior needs to borrow a spark or two in order to get fired up. The spark of inspiration ignites because something about that external flame resonates with our own unseen energy.

I've had a few sources of inspiration in my life so far. Some of them I've known face to face, a few from a distance, others only within the realm of my imagination, and still others remain to be seen, I'm sure. Still, there is one light that has been my sun for a long time. I'm not even sure if I would be who I am today without their initial spark and the embers I always found myself returning to sporadically, whenever I needed their light. That light gave me the resolve to make many invisible climbs, renew my vision, keep my sense of hope, rediscover internal authenticity, served as my mirror and yes, even saved my spirit on more than a few occasions. Call it a soul contract, if you will, but I've always wanted to simply say "thank you."

Of course, be careful what you wish for. Sometimes we get what we've been chasing after, just not in the exact form that we would've hoped. A beautiful spirit experiencing more suffering than they deserved isn't the way I imagined it, but in a way it fits-it is right. Not the suffering, but passing the flame back to a set of embers that once helped give me the inspiration to overcome my own makes sense. Most things in life travel in circles, why should I think this would be any different?

In that sense, it is eternal-the flame, the inspiration, the embers that will never really die. A reflection comes to life in order to give back what it took from its source.

While we may ultimately save ourselves, we can't fight alone. For that reflection I received so many years ago, I am more than grateful. The rays of that sun will never be gone because they became a part of me-the part of me which continues to hope that my end of the bargain will be enough to save those original embers from becoming fully extinguished.